In the months leading up to the release of Star Trek Into Darkness, we got a lot of "Is he or isn't he?" teases as to whether Benedict Cumberbatch's character would be Khan Noonian Singh. Screenwriter Roberto Orci reveals in a new interview that, even during the scripting phase, there was a lot of debate about whether J.J. Abram's second Trek movie would include Khan.

The good folks at the Mission Log Podcast recently interviewed Orci about the Star Trek Into Darkness villain, and the full interview will be online on September 16th. But 1701 News got a sneak listen to the interview and has shared a few of the details.

Orci talks about how he and the rest of the STID writing team had Khan in mind from the beginning, and even contemplated a Heart of Darkness-style story, with the crew of the Enterprise seeking out a Kurtzian Khan. It wasn't until after they tried to come up with non-Khan stories that they developed the idea of a man who had been manipulated by Starfleet and ended up becoming a terrorist. That man, they ultimately decided, was Khan.

But Orci makes this rather odd statement about the role of the Kirk-Khan relationship in the Star Trek universe:

"You can't do Batman without The Joker," he said. "We knew it would be tricky, and we knew it would lead to a vocal outcry by some fans. But, you know, you have to make tough decisions, when you do something like this."